Latest news with #rights
CTV News
a day ago
- CTV News
New book on 1977 gay bar raid in Montreal
The 1977 police raid at Montreal gay bar Truxx was a turning point for LGBTQ2S+ rights in Quebec and Canada. Local author Ben Ladouceur has penned a new book inspired by the raid.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Scenes From the ‘No Kings' Rallies and the Military Parade
To the Editor: Re 'Military Might, Protest Power' (front page, June 15): Thirty-three years ago this month, I was interrogated by the secret police in China when my year of teaching English was ending. At that time, I had no knowledge about my rights as a U.S. citizen, so I didn't know to demand them. Later, however, I realized that being a U.S. citizen afforded me rights in another country. This truth gave me confidence and calm from that day on. Today I no longer have such confidence. But what makes it so much worse is that my rights are being trampled in the United States, the country of my birth. The only hope I have is in my fellow citizens in the recent (and future!) 'No Kings' marches who are standing up against the tyranny of this administration. Elena YeePoughkeepsie, N.Y. To the Editor: So you ask: 'What good does protesting do? You're just preaching to the choir.' As I was protesting with a small crowd in Milton, Mass., and cars were driving by, I started yelling 'Honk!' and waving my sign. I realized that the actual words on my rain-soaked sign (or anyone's signs) did not matter. When people drove by in cars, I'd make eye contact and wave, and then maybe get a shy smile back or a big thumbs-up. When people honked, I'd pump a fist in circles to get them to keep it up. So many people of different races smiled back, with the surprised look of someone who isn't used to getting smiles and waves from a stranger. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Multiple immigration sweeps reported across L.A., with a tense standoff downtown
In a show of force in the heart of Los Angeles, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Friday carried out a series of immigration sweeps, including two downtown that sparked a tense standoff. Videos showed federal agents running after people in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Westlake, not far from downtown Los Angeles. A man recording the video can be heard warning people in Spanish that immigration officials were at the location and to stay away. Another raid occurred at a business in the Garment District near 9th and Towne streets, with agents in riot gear detaining workers at a clothing store as dozens of people began to gather outside. As workers were hauled off in cuffs, throngs of people yelled at the agents and held up cellphones to record them, according to videos of the showdown. One person threw eggs at one of the vehicles as agents pushed members of the public back, the videos showed. In the street, immigrant-rights advocates stood on a bed of a truck, using megaphones to speak to the workers inside the store, reminding them of their constitutional rights and instructing them not to sign anything or say anything to federal agents. They also told the agents that lawyers wanted access to the workers, and sometimes called out specific names. 'I want to talk to my clients Luis Lopez and Michel Garcia. We are here," one person could be heard saying. "The community is here with you. Your family is here with you." Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE, said federal agents in downtown Los Angeles were executing search warrants related to the harboring of people illegally in the country. At least 44 people were arrested and one for obstructing No other details were provided. The raids are the latest in a string of high-profile immigration enforcement actions over the last week, part of President Trump's promised deportation crackdown. A few days ago, immigration agents raided a popular San Diego restaurant and made arrests, sparking a standoff with outraged residents. Agents also arrested Chinese and Taiwanese nationals at an underground nightclub in the Los Angeles area. Officials from the Service Employees International Union said in a statement that its California president, David Huerta, was detained and injured during a downtown raid "while exercising his First Amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity." An SEIU spokesperson said Huerta was taken to LA County General Hospital for his injuries and later released into federal custody. In a post on X, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite "when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle." he wrote. "He was arrested for interfering with federal officers and will face arraignment in federal court on Monday." Friday's actions were met with criticism from L.A. leaders, who oppose the immigration crackdown. "These actions are escalating: agents arrive without warning and leave quickly, aware that our communities mobilize fast," Los Angeles Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in a statement. "I urge Angelenos to stay alert." Mayor Karen Bass said that such raids "sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city... We will not stand for this.' Among the names immigration advocates called out Friday during the downtown L.A. raid was that of Marco Garcia, 37. Outside, his daughter, 18-year-old Katia Garcia, peered into the store as federal agents swept through the location. "I'm in disbelief," she said. "I can't believe this is happening." Katia Garcia, a U.S. citizen, said she was notified about her father's situation by phone, left school and headed to the clothing store. She said her father is undocumented and has been in the U.S. for 20 years. "We never thought this would happen to us," she said. The crowd remained mostly peaceful, but photos and videos of the scene showed some unmarked vehicles used by ICE had been vandalized with graffiti. As agents whisked away workers in white SUVs, members of the crowd walked and ran alongside the vehicles, videos from the scene showed. At one point, a man backpedaling in front of a departing SUV was nearly run over when he tripped and fell in front of the vehicle. The SUV reversed and sped around him, the videos showed. Two miles away, near the intersection of 15th Street and Santa Fe Avenue, FBI agents were spotted at a warehouse associated with the raid at 9th and Towne streets. A crowd had gathered outside the gates of the business, where agents arrested Huerta. Ilse Escobar, a United Teachers Los Angeles political organizer, told The Times she saw a scuffle take place before seeing Huerta being thrown to the ground by a federal agent. "I told him, you just arrested a labor union president," Escobar said. The Los Angeles Fire Department said at least one person was transported to a local hospital from that location. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a written statement that his department was aware that ICE was conducting operations in the city. 'I'm aware that these actions cause anxiety for many Angelenos, so I want to make it clear: the LAPD is not involved in civil immigration enforcement," he said. "While the [department] will continue to have a visible presence in all our communities to ensure public safety, we will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations nor will the LAPD try to determine an individual's immigration status." McDonnell said since 1979, the department's policy has barred officers from initiating police action solely to determine a person's immigration status, and it will continue to focus on reducing crime and enhancing public safety. "I want everyone, including our immigrant community, to feel safe calling the police in their time of need and know that the LAPD will be there for you without regard to one's immigration status," he said. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has pushed ICE to start making at least 3,000 arrests a day, an effort that is reflected in the rising detention numbers by ICE, which have topped more than 50,000 for the first time since Trump's first presidency, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that tracks the federal government's enforcement activities. This week, CBS reported that ICE had recorded 2,000 arrests each day, a dramatic increase from the daily average of 660 arrests reported by the agency during Trump's first 100 days back at the White House. Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, an independent political organization advocating for immigrant rights and social justice, said his group has been "flooded" with calls about immigration sweeps taking place. "There were ICE agents at a Home Depot in Cypress Park, there's ICE agents at Wilshire Boulevard and Union Avenue, a construction site in North Hollywood and in South L.A.," he said in a phone interview. "They're everywhere." Times staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Washington Post
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
‘We have to fight': WorldPride attendees on why they're still celebrating
As WorldPride in Washington winds to its official close on Sunday, The Washington Post spoke with visitors about why they decided to attend the festival and what it meant to be a part of it. In the interviews below, visitors from near and far told us they were participating in WorldPride this year not just to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, but to stand defiantly in a time of political backlash and rising threats to hard-won rights. Whether honoring decades of struggle, protecting their families, or simply claiming space, they spoke of resilience, resistance, and a commitment to being seen and heard.
Washington Post
06-06-2025
- General
- Washington Post
13 students on what studying history taught them about the present
From June 8 to June 12, thousands of middle and high school students from across the United States and around the world will gather at the University of Maryland for the National History Day contest. These young people have spent a whole school year conducting original, primary-source research on subjects related to the theme 'rights and responsibilities in history.' We asked them: What has studying the past taught you about the present? These are some of the hundreds of answers we received. — Alyssa Rosenberg, letters and community editor We don't know everything Even our most familiar stories have unknown elements that can teach us important things. I studied Mary Katharine Goddard, a printer and postmaster in the Revolutionary War era who printed the first fully signed official copy of the Declaration of Independence. Learning about her opened my eyes to the powerful role women played in our nation's founding and helped me understand that there is so much more complexity, in both the past and present, than we might assume. Ada Allen, Craftsbury Common, Vermont Not only was the incredibly successful Black American community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, often called Black Wall Street, violently destroyed by White mobs, but the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was deliberately covered up and excluded from history books for decades. The survivors and their families have not received justice or reparations. This event was not only tragic — it was almost erased. Studying the Tulsa Race Massacre made me realize how some parts of history are hidden on purpose. Tala Elnaggar, Metairie, Louisiana The price of progress Studying the past has taught us that progress often comes at a cost, and that history is more complex than the stories we were first told. Take the 1890 establishment of Sequoia National Park. At first glance, it was a bold step by President Benjamin Harrison to protect the treasured giant sequoias from industrial logging and development and a major turning point in the U.S. government's efforts to value nature for itself. But the creation of Sequoia National Park displaced indigenous people, including the Nyyhmy tribe, who had lived on and cared for the land for generations. Their deep spiritual and cultural ties to the land were destroyed in the name of 'preservation.' We have to ask who benefits from progress? Who is included in decision-making and who is left out? Even major victories can hide significant injustice. We must not just build on the successes of history, but also avoid repeating past mistakes. Brooklynn Lee and Olive DeGiovanni, Battle Ground, Washington Story continues below advertisement Advertisement We can backslide Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, 'The Jungle,' became a rallying cry for factory workers and citizens to create safer working areas and processes that would produce meat that consumers knew was safe. Today, the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department still regulate the food we eat. But the current administration is reevaluating the government's role and has taken measures to reduce staff in positions it deems inefficient. Though a large-scale disaster has not yet resulted from the recent cuts, the food industry has the potential to shift toward the state that Sinclair reported and wrote about in 'The Jungle,' in which corporate greed outweighed human welfare and consumer safety. History offers guidance, but it does not guarantee progress. Ignoring history and reducing safety regulations in the interest of efficiency can compromise the safeguards that took decades to establish. By forgetting our past, we risk repeating previous catastrophes in new ways. Gia Cipriani, Bayonne, New Jersey The present is shaped and sometimes haunted by the past. Lewis Hine's 1908 photograph of Pennsylvania's breaker boys, their faces smeared with coal dust, is echoed by a portrait of a 14-year-old whose arm was nearly torn off in 2022 while cleaning a machine at a Perdue Farms poultry plant in Virginia. Studying history taught me that progress can easily unravel without vigilance. Kailey Amaya, Boca Raton, Florida Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Standards change We should never judge someone's worth or status based on the standards of our own time. Today, you are considered affluent in New England if you live in a house by the beach and can afford to eat lobster. But even until the 1800s, lobsters were a poor person's food. Living on the coast was a point of shame because it meant you couldn't afford the city. The criteria that our society uses to judge someone's importance and influence can change over time and does not define how they will be viewed by history. Vivian Best, Barrington, New Hampshire But not without effort Studying South Africa's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic made me realize the past is not a frozen moment but a site of competing possibilities: What could be done, what was allowed and what was punished. I assumed that states have the sovereign right to protect their populations during a public health crisis. But South Africa's decision to defy international patent protections to import affordable, generic antiretroviral drugs was actively resisted by international institutions and pharmaceutical consortia. History is not only about the events that occurred, but also about the boundaries that defined what responses to those events were thinkable. Contemporary policies are always shaped by legal norms from earlier eras, commercial interests and institutional inertia. That doesn't mean they are illegitimate, but it does mean they are historically contingent. Many contemporary constraints, in health, in trade, in governance, are neither natural nor permanent. They are maintained by choice, and therefore open to challenge. Yeonseo Shin, Apgujeong, South Korea Pain doesn't always mean progress Looking at history has shown me that just because people are hurt by government decisions, it doesn't mean anything will actually change. The government isn't always sympathetic, and policies don't always shift — even when it seems obvious they should. For example, Yucca Mountain in my state of Nevada is still being considered for a nuclear waste repository, even though people here are still living with the consequences of decisions made in the Treaty of Ruby Valley more than 160 years ago. This treaty also contributed to the loss of Native American culture and land. In addition, if the government continues to disregard the treaty to proceed with the repository, it will put residents and the environment at risk of potential groundwater contamination and facility damage from possible earthquakes — risking harm to all Nevada citizens. Because of this, I now pay much more attention to the details in laws and policies, since even small things can have a huge impact — especially on people whose voices often go unheard. I'm more aware of how a law's wording can shape real lives. It's made me more skeptical of what officials say and more likely to listen to people's actual experiences, instead of just trusting statistics or official documents. Christina Zhakov, Incline Village, Nevada But sometimes, it's possible Learning how over 140 workers, mostly young women, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire because the doors were locked and there were no proper safety rules really shocked me. It made me realize how much people had to go through just to get basic protections at work. Learning about this fire showed me that rights do not just appear. People had to fight for them. It also reminded me that with those rights comes the responsibility to protect these victories other people made sacrifices for to win. Sarah Elsherbini, Windsor, Connecticut Story continues below advertisement Advertisement We're all the media now William Randolph Hearst's use of yellow journalism during the Spanish-American War showed me how powerful — and dangerous — the media can be when truth takes a back seat to profit or power. Today, the platforms are different, but the strategies are often the same: grab attention, shape opinion, push a narrative. It's so easy to sway people when you control the story. And now, with social media, everyone controls a story. That's both empowering and risky. Even a single post, headline or comment can make a difference. You don't need a news empire to influence someone's thinking. That's a powerful responsibility — and one we don't always treat with care. Stanley Lyons, Germantown, Tennessee And we can all make history For National History Day, I've studied the labor reform movement, the Korean War, the long shadows of 9/11 and, now, the Little Rock Nine. In my most recent research, I expected to find powerful stories about the past — but instead, I found a mirror reflecting the present. These students were my age. They weren't activists by design, but by necessity. They stepped into history not because they were ready, but because no one else would. Studying history taught me how to research. And, more important, it taught me how to think, how to listen and how to recognize the quiet moments when the future is asking you to respond. Maybe the real question history asks isn't 'what happened?' but 'what would you do if it happened again?' Jay Lee, Wonju, South Korea Have hope From joint spaceflights to the first and only universally ratified U.N. treaty, the most important thing historical research has given me is a profound hope for humanity. Although our world is plagued by conflict, disease and war, studying these successes through history has shown me that we can overcome division to create something truly incredible. The success of the Montreal Protocol at battling ozone depletion shows that climate action is not impossible if we all work together. Adah Goel, Bothell, Washington
